The Next Chapter in Story Development

Influence Character

Dramatica Term

the character that forces the Main Character to face his personal problem

Every Main Character has a single Influence Character that forces him to face his personal problems. From the Main Character's point of view, the Influence Character may seem to be blocking the road to the solution of the Main Character's personal problem, or he may seem to be trying to knock the Main Character off the road to the solution. In a more objective view, the Influence Character functions to block the Main Character from sweeping his personal problem under the carpet, forcing the Main Character to address it directly. In every act, a story problem is introduced that requires the Main Character to expose his personal problem in order to solve the story problem. It is the Influence Character that creates the most personal tension for the Main Character. Frequently, the Main Character is chosen by the author to be the Protagonist as well, and often the Influence Character function is combined with the Guardian or the Contagonist. In this way, they each do double duty as prime movers of both the Overall (Objective) and Relationship Throughline concerns of the story. This arrangement is not essential, however, and in many cases it is prudent to assign the Main and Impact Character roles to characters other than the Protagonist and Guardian/Contagonist in order to clearly explore the relationship between the Overall and Relationship problems of the story.

Dictionary Entry

Getting to know Dramatica's terminology is not easy! The reason it is hard is that our language tends to create lots of words to deal with common concepts, and hardly any to deal with less up front notions. In the areas in which our culture does not focus, there are few (and sometimes no existing) words to do the job. Yet, for a story to be complete, ALL essential considerations need to be addressed to prevent holes.